EFF defends Yes Men from business rage over climate hoax

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is telling the US Chamber of Commerce to …

The nation's leading business trade association is not a happy camper about a parody site that has rewritten its controversial position on climate change legislation. Attorneys for the United States Chamber of Commerce have issued a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown demand notice against the latest prank by the Yes Men, that self-described "genderless, loose-knit association of some 300 impostors worldwide who agree their way into the fortified compounds of commerce"—and then unleash the clowns of public relations war.

But lawyers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation are telling the Chamber to cool off about the whole affair.

What's the furor about? The Yes Men staged a fake press conference this week at the National Press Club in Washington. A "Yes Man" calling himself "Hingo Sembra" actually took to the podium in front of reporters to announce the Chamber's shift on climate change, only to have the whole spectacle turn truly bizarre when a real Chamber official showed up.

According to CBS News, "The press conference began normally but dissolved into a surreal scene when a legitimate Chamber official burst into the event, having heard about it from a reporter, and exclaimed that 'Sembra' was a phony. The activist holding the press conference then called the Chamber official, Eric Wohlschlegel, a fake and demanded his business card."

The Yes Men also went all-out to create a new Chamber of Commerce website, complete with a faux statement by the group's CEO, Thomas J. Donahue, that does a full about-face on the Chamber's notorious opposition to proposed greenhouse gas reduction laws. In his new, improved, rather long-winded, and completely fabricated Yes Men ghostwritten speech, Donahue now warns that the business community needs to "remember Lehman Brothers, a committed, solid member of this Chamber, who in the interest of short-term gain scuttled a century. They ate lamb, but were left without wool when the cold, hard winter set in."

The phony address acknowledges that in the recent past the Chamber has "tried to keep climate science from interfering with business." But now the group sees the light. "Without a stable climate, there will be no business. We need business more than we need relentlessly higher returns." As a result, "the Chamber expects to welcome back companies that have recently defected over our climate stance," faux Donahue predicts.

Fundamental differences

That reference is no joke, actually. Pacific Gas and Electricity, among other utility companies, has dropped its membership in the Chamber of Commerce for real. Its Chairman and CEO Peter Darbee cited "fundamental differences" with the trade association over climate change, not to mention being grossed out by a Chamber Vice President's comments likening concerns that global warming will endanger public health to opposition to Darwinian evolution in the 1920s. William Kovacs recently said he wanted an "on-the-record" government proceeding on the question, something akin to "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century . . . evolution versus creationism."

Meanwhile, the bogus site even comes with a fraudulent celebratory press release about Donahue's fake turnaround speech. The Chamber has announced "an immediate moratorium on lobbying and publicity work opposing climate legislation," it happily proclaims.

Needless to say, the real Mr. Donahue and company are not amused. On Monday, the Chamber declared that "public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change," and promised to take action against the gag.

On Tuesday, Chamber attorneys lobbed their takedown letter over to the Yes Men's ISP, Hurricane Electric [see update below], noting that the joke site is chock full of logos, images, and designs associated with the real group. And don't forget, the letter to Hurricane puffed, that the real group is "well known within the United States," and a recent poll proclaimed it "among the top five best-known and respected organizations in Washington, DC."

So get that satirical website down by Thursday, Chamber lawyers warned, and cancel your accounts with those nasty Yes Men. "We are sure you can understand our clients' concerns," the letter concludes.

No we can't, responded EFF attorney Matthew Zimmerman on Thursday, citing fair use and parody rights. "Further, to the extent that it utilizes copyrightable materials of the Chamber, the Parodic Site uses no more than necessary for purposes of the parody," the letter notes. What the Yes Men have created "is plainly not a substitute for the original," EFF argues.

It is, however, a lot more fun, and very early this morning it was still up and running.

Correction and update

The May First/People Link group writes in to point out that it is the Yes Men's site provider, Hurricane Electric being May First's upstream provider. According to May First, HE demanded that the group pull the Yes Men site. When it refused, HE placed over 400 of the organization's sites off-line.

"We moved the site to another of our servers, driven by another of our upstream providers," Alfredo Lopez of May First tells us, "and demanded that HE return us to service and, after an hour and a half of down time, they did that. We do not remove sites from circulation because of political content."

Matthew Lasar / Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.